


please, hold my hand

by willssoulace



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Awkward Flirting, F/M, First Meetings, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-10
Updated: 2018-08-10
Packaged: 2019-06-25 12:34:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15640863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/willssoulace/pseuds/willssoulace
Summary: Annabeth and Percy are on a airplane together and Percy has a panic attack so Annabeth just, hold his hand??I'm bad with summaries but I swear, this one shot is cute.Humans! AU





	please, hold my hand

**Author's Note:**

> Hey y'all! I wasn't expecting to write something for another year cause, y'know, when you have the writer's block and you manage to write a thing, you just feel at peace with yourself for at least an entire year. But here I am, writing another fic! Wooo, am I not amazing? Jokes aside, I missed writing about percabeth and I really enjoyed writing this thing. Fun Fact: I had a panic attack on a airplane too, once, but nobody held my hand.  
> I wish Annabeth was there, but we can't always have what we want. Anyway, I hope you like it. Let me know what you think about it and I apologize for my grammar mistakes, English is not my native language.

_For my princess,_

_I love you so much._  

 

That was surely not one of Annabeth’s best days.  
The plan was simple: wake up, drink coffee, have a shower, go to the airport, go to New York.  
All in the most perfect form of peace and serenity. Simple, right?  
If only her neighbors could have known about her projects, too.  
She was woken up at 6am – i.e. two hours earlier than her clock- by the most terrible noise she had ever heard. At first, she thought a war was going on right in her apartment. Or a terrorist attack. She got up so quickly, she almost tripped in her own feet. When her brain started to properly work, she realized her apartment was as normal as she had left it the night before. And that the terrible battle she had first thought was happening right there was, instead, music.  
If we can actually call that music, of course.  
Turned out her neighbors just liked to play heavy metal music at a awkwardly loud volume in the very early morning.  
Everything normal.  
Annabeth thanked the gods above her that she was leaving that day because she wouldn’t have stood to live near those psychopaths a minute more. Once she got up the bed, she decided to take advantage of the situation and get ready for her flight.  
She had a shower, drank her coffee, texted her dad and tried to read a book- which was barely impossible with all that noise, but her stubbornness didn’t allow her to give up on such a good book.  
After spending an hour doing useless thing just to pass the time, she decided it was meaningless to stay there and listen to the “music” and she went to the airport.  
Three hours earlier.  
She had always had the ability to change plans at the last minute and make things work anyway. That’s how her mind worked. It was like some part of her brain opened up when things weren’t as expected and operated like  crazy to make sure they would be fine. She couldn’t bear to fail. Or to think she had failed. Sometimes these two were the same thing.  
The airport was probably one of her favorites places in the world. People often thought she was weird because of it, especially her friends. But to her, the airport  was the calmest and at the same time fullest place. There was some sort of calmness in watching airplanes fly in the sky, in watching people stand in line with their tickets, ready to go home or to a place they’ve never been before, to live a new adventure. While she waited, she watched other people’s faces. Some of them were bright and excited, mostly the kids’ ones. Others were cold and sad, even scared sometimes. She understood all of those emotions. She didn’t know how she felt. Sometimes she was enthusiastic, others she was nostalgic. But in that laid the magic of flying, in all those emotions that sometimes were confused like fog and others as clear as the ocean. In that moment, while Annabeth waited in line for her flight, she felt hopeful. She had stayed in that city for a month, and it had become some kind of safe place for her. But she knew in her heart that she couldn’t stay there forever. She couldn’t run away from her responsibilities, her fears, or even her dreams. As much as she wanted to, she couldn’t hide from what life gave her. She had to face it. And despite the uncertainty- her biggest enemy- she still had hope.  
So she sat near the window, waited for the hostess to finish her demonstration of where the exits were, how to fasten their seatbelts, when portable electronics could or couldn’t be used, and other stuff people never paid attention to. Well, people who weren’t her, of course. She liked to be prepared. When the demonstration finished, she took her book from her backpack and opened it.  
“What book is it?” she heard a boy’s voice ask. She didn’t hear curiosity in the voice so she grasped he just wanted to make conversation. Too bad she didn’t feel the same. She quickly closed the book and showed the cover to the person next to her, just to open it  again the moment she heard him saying “Woah, that seems cool”.  
The boy had a New York accent, he was probably going home like her. If she had felt less annoyed, she could have probably talked to him.  
Unfortunately, she hated when people interrupted while she was reading so she automatically decided to ignore him and just keep reading. Which, for the record, worked only for ten minutes. The boy was seriously determined to talk, wasn’t he?  
“So” he started, making Annabeth roll her eyes. _Take a hint, dude._  
“you’re going to New York?” he asked, after a minute of hesitation. He clearly was looking for something to say that actually made sense. Instead, he chose that.  
“Seriously?” she heard herself say “No, I’m going to Rome.”  
When she turned to face him, her sarcastic expression completely fell. The boy was probably bad at making conversations, or at getting people’s intentions for what it’s worth, but damn, he was handsome. He seemed to have her same age, and she figured he was as tall as her. His black hair was covered by a blue hat, and he was wearing a large blue sweater. Which was weird, considered it was August. He was looking at Annabeth with his wide, ocean eyes and his face was sharp and quite pale. He bit his lips, turning his face away for embarrassment.  
“Sorry” he told her, chuckling  “I was just trying to distract myself, I don’t have one of those, you know?” he pointed at her book.  
“You’re afraid of flying” she stated.  
“Yeah, well, I’m not a big fan of heights” and, as to prove that, he shivered when he looked outside the window. Annabeth followed his gaze, they were already quite high. When she faced him again, she noticed he had closed his eyes. She stared at him for a while. His breath was fast, and it seemed to keep increasing more and more. Even the people near them could hear it, some of them gazed at them. Even she started to feel worried.  
“Hey” she started, but she quickly realized she didn’t know what to tell him. _Come on, Annabeth, think!_ “This is the safest vehicle in the world, you know? It’s safer than cars! I mean, it’s most likely for you to die in a car accident than here.”  
Yeah, well, she wasn’t really good at calming people down. Especially strangers. She started to think frenetically. There must have been something she could have said to him to make him feel better, she just couldn’t think of it in that moment. Maybe she was panicking, too.  
The boy still had his eyes closed, and he was grabbing his seatbelt with so many strength she could see his knuckles turning white and the muscles of his arms tense. Which wasn’t helping her concentrate, if you asked.  
Her brain wasn’t collaborating, either. The only thing that came up to her mind were statistics and numbers and stuff that she surely couldn’t tell him about in that moment. “I could borrow you my book, if you want to. I mean, it’s not a very happy book but-“ she tried to say. She wasn’t sure if offering 1984 to a terrified person was much of a help, actually. That was definitely not one of her best ideas.  
“Can you hold my hand?” he nearly begged, with a miserable tone in his voice. He didn’t dare to look her in the eyes, or to look at anything else, like he was afraid of what he would have seen. Annabeth felt a sense of compassion towards him. She wondered if he always asked people to hold his hand when he took the airplane, and what people replied to that request. It certainly was an odd one, which left her a little unprepared for ten seconds, but after bubbling a little bit- she was starting to feel pathetic, already- she assented. She took his hand with as much delicacy she owned, and felt him letting go a breathe a second after. He hold her hand so tight, she thought he was about to detach it from her arm. But then, his hold eased a little bit and he started to breath normally. When he opened his eyes, there still was fear in them but somehow, they contained courage, too. Fear and courage at once, that was new for Annabeth. She regretted thinking he was stupid, before. “Are you feeling better?” somehow she found her voice, again.  
She was still feeling awkward- apparently holding strangers’ hands wasn’t one of her requirements- but she also felt relieved. For a moment, she had thought the boy could have fainted.  
He nodded, “thank you” his voice came weak to her ears.  
“I’m Annabeth, by the way” she bubbled, again.  
Somehow she couldn’t stop bubbling around this guy. There must have been something in the air.  
“Percy”  
There were so many other things to say, so many subjects to talk about. Annabeth surely knew way too many topics for her own good. But none of them was debated between them. Silence seemed to be more comfortable. Annabeth thought, not without a sense of delight, that they must have looked so weird to others. Two strangers who held hands, without saying a word. Among all the things she had prepared herself for that same morning, this wasn’t one of them. Nevertheless, it didn’t bother her at all. It just revived the hope she had felt before stepping on that plane. Maybe she hadn’t sensed hope, maybe she had sensed him.  
She smiled for her stupidity. She couldn’t sense people, that wasn’t logical at all. “Isn’t it strange?” he questioned, as he could hear her thoughts.  
“What?”  
“You’re the first stranger who’s ever held my hand” he said, his voice full of amusement.  
She smiled at him. “Well, you’re the first one who’s ever asked me to” she informed him.  
Something in her tone made him laugh, which made Annabeth’s heart lose a beat. She missed the feeling of fondness towards a person besides her father. It was ironic she was feeling it for someone she didn’t even know.  
He left her hand, causing her disappointment, and took her book.  
“So, does your offer still stand?”  
It was her turn to laugh. “I’m not sure your sensitive soul could handle this kind of book” she teased him.  
Percy glared at her for a second too long, almost making her regret what she said. Did she just insult him?  
But then a smile formed in his face. “Try me” he said cheerfully.  
“Boy, you’re not prepared for it” Annabeth announced jokingly, before swooping in on a long and detailed description of Orwell’s masterpiece.  
Maybe the boy wasn’t prepared for the cruel sadness of the book, or for that flight, or for a lot of other things. But she probably wasn’t prepared for what it would have come next, either.  
And it was fine, it was perfect. 


End file.
